Re: ssh issue that I don't understand

At Sun, 5 Jul 2026 20:19:12 +0100 Chris Green <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> This isn't a problem as such but I don't understand why it's happening
> and I'd like to understand.
> 
> I have a VPS called isbd.biz and I access it using ssh.  My user
> account on both my local machine (desktop and laptop) is 'chris' and
> my user account on isbd.biz is also 'chris'.
> 
> I have account 'chris' on isbd.biz set up to allow login only using
> public key authentication.
> 
> The ip address of isbd.biz is 213.171.194.64.
> 
> If I log in with 'ssh 213.171.194.64' I, correctly, get prompted for
> my local system's public key passphrase and I can log in successfully.
> 
> However if I try 'ssh isbd.biz' I get prompted for "[email protected]'s
> password" which doesn't exist and I can't log in.
> 
> 'host isbd.biz' returns the correct IP address for isbd.biz so why
> does ssh not work using the name rather than the IP address?
> 

This probably relates to the contents of ~/.ssh/known_hosts.  213.171.194.64 
is in ~/.ssh/known_hosts, but isbd.biz is not.